Æ35 - Gordian III ΜΑΤΡΟϹ ΑΠΟΙΚΩΝ ΠΟΛΙΩΝ ΗΡΑΚΛΕΩΤΑΝ

Heraclea Pontica had a complicated relationship with its own founding myth — the city claimed descent from Megarian and Boeotian colonists, and civic coinage under the Roman empire frequently weaponized that ancestry as a statement of Greek identity within a Roman administrative framework. By Gordian III's reign the city was issuing some of the largest and most ambitious bronzes in the Pontic region, and this 35mm piece sits at the top of that ambition. The reverse legend's explicit invocation of a colonial heritage was a deliberate civic boast, not decorative formula.